“There is a vision, in the heart of each, Of justice, mercy, wisdom, tenderness
To wrong and pain and knowledge of the cure;
And these embodied in a woman’s form,
That best transmits them pure as first received.”
—Robert Browning.
 
“Behold, the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according to thy word.”—Mary.
 
Miriamne, the day after her conversion, at evening, was sitting in the portal of the church at Bozrah, musing. “Oh, how I thank Father Adolphus for showing me the way to this peace!” The western sky, to the maiden’s rapt imagination, seemed very like the gate of Heaven, and in her meditations she exclaimed as if talking to those in glory, yet near to her: “Mother of my Saviour, I need a mother! Thou and I, two women, loved of the same Lord, shall we not evermore be friends?” Then the stars glittered through the fading sun light like night-lamps, set along the parapets of that far off city, and the maiden felt as if heaven’s doors were being shut. She was oppressed with a sense of being left alone, and thereupon cried out, “Oh, Jesus, Jesus, do not leave me here in the dark; Oh! thou mother, sainted and happy, may I not be where thou art until morning?” The cry or prayer of[352] the girl, having in it much of the poet, little of the skilled theologian, was one likely to be censured by those adept in stately forms, and yet it was very natural. Miriamne was but an infant in experience and had yet to learn that after the resurrection came Pentecost; then the Ascension. Steps like these are in the believer’s experience; conversion is a rising from the dead to be followed by the assuring work of the Holy Spirit, then Heaven. But the soul quickened from the charnel-house of sin and inducted, not only into a new inner life but into a new fellowship, hungers for more and more. Hence, it is a common thing for the young convert to wish to die, and be away from life’s turmoils and defilements at once and with the glorified, immediately, forever. It is as if the disciple would pass at once from the sepulcher directly up the Mount of Ascension. In this spirit Mary Magdalene pressed forward to embrace to her human heart the newly risen Saviour that morning when he tenderly restrained her. There was something for her to be and do before the final rest on the Divine bosom, in unending rapture. “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended,” as if He would say, “I myself, have other work yet, before the eternal gates are lifted up for my triumphal entrance as the King of Glory.” “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father.” The master words were, “Go;” “say.” The load Jesus put on His followers was the same in kind, though infinitely less, that He took on Himself. Some way it was love burdening with blessing, for He that in dying agony sent the Rose of His heart, Mary, to the home of John instead of at once to Paradise, knew surely that then for her that was best. “To go” and[353] “tell” was best for Magdalene, as to stay and work for a time is best for all:
 
So Miriamne’s prayer, though so worded that it would have been censured by the learned churchmen, was heard in heaven, and He that said: “My peace I leave with you,” ministered, all unseen by human eye, to that lamb, bleating alone amid the dark giant castles of Bashan and the darker castles of fears that hover not far from each new-born of His Kingdom. She passed from repining, from morbidly wishing to die and from thoughts solely of her own weal, to the second stage of experience; that stage, where the young convert is influenced with a burning zeal to tell of the blessings found and thereby win others for the Saviour. Miriamne soon felt desire inexpressible to run and tell others of her joy. Then her mind recurred to her father, living somewhere far to the westward, just beneath where she had fancied the gates of heaven were a little while ago. “No, no; I cannot go yet! I must stay here and do something. Oh, I’d be ashamed to go to heaven and leave my father, my mother, my brothers, my people in their misery!” As she thus spoke she pulled her hand quickly down by her side. The motion like to one pulling away from some leading influence. A voice at hand spoke: “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”
 
Miriamne, with a slight startled exclamation, turned to see whence the voice and with joy beheld Father Adolphus.
 
“Oh, dear Father, I’m glad you came this way! I want to tell you above all others how happy you made me.”
 
Solemnly and tenderly the old man replied: “‘Not[354] unto us, oh Lord; not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy and for thy truth’s sake.’”
 
“Yes, He has done it; but you helped, good teacher; and I am so happy! Oh, I do not know myself! I feel so changed. I’m growing wiser, happier and stronger every minute.”
 
“If so, then, He that called thee, daughter, had a purpose.”
 
“I know it; see it; feel it. I’m called to help my people; to bring together Sir Charleroy and Rizpah.”
 
“Say ‘my parents’; it’s more filial.”
 
“Yes, but it’s so strange. I call them in my mind now all the time by their names. It seems as if I belonged to another family; that of Jesus, Mary and the Angels.”
 
“A child of the Kingdom, indeed! When thy parents are converted, the family tie will be revived. Thou dost feel the love of heaven; the great eternal family bond, as Christ when he said: ‘My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God and do it.’”
 
“But if I hope to bring my parents together I must go first to my father and persuade him. I know my mother will object to the journey. Can I disobey her and still please God?”
 
“Ask God. I have for thee, and already see thy way. I have already acted in this matter.”
 
“I can not forget the law in that I learn that ‘He that setteth lightly by his father or his mother is cursed.’ Among our noble ancients, the Maccabees, the disobedient child was even stoned to death.”
 
“But thy salvation puts thee under the Gospel, although, under the Law even parents had duties; they[355] were forbidden to make their children walk through the idolatrous fires. What says Jesus to thee?”
 
“I do not know whether it be His spirit or not; yet all the time I hear a voice within me saying: ‘These twain shall be one.’”
 
“I see thy soul abhors this actual divorcement of thy parents. Oh, how some play hide and seek with their consciences around forms as these do; not comforting but hating each other; not bearing together their common burdens; wide seas between them, yet fancying they have violated no law of God, because they have not asked the law of man to do what it never can, truly, proclaim two, neither having committed the deadly sin, apart.”
 
“This separate living is their constant sin?”
 
“He that starts wrongly repeats the wrong anew each time that, by act or thought, he approves the wrong first done. Sin’s name is truly legion.”
 
“What an awful thing is sin!”
 
“True, daughter. It blinds its victims here, and its wages hereafter is death.”
 
“That’s why I fear to disobey my mother; what if it be sin to do so?”
 
“The command, my child, is ‘children obey your parents—in the Lord.”
 
“What does ‘in the Lord’ mean?”
 
“I’ll tell thee, my little catechumen; there comes a time to some youths, in pious life, when duty to God compels disobedience of parents; as it came to Jonathan, son of Saul. God is Father and mother to the righteous, and His law must be first. Mary left home and every thing, first and last, to follow Jesus. Her way was the Christian’s.”
 
[356]
 
“I thought once I was right in obeying my mother without question. Now I think I may be right in disobeying without question. The old and the new law are at war within me.”
 
“Amid these Bashan hills Paul, the Holy Saint, traveled, led of God from thinking that directly opposite to his former beliefs, the truth. Jesus met him then on the way to Damascus, in power and in glory; Paul had been for a long time a profound scholar, a Pharisee of thy people. On this journey, enlightened by the spirit, he asked and learned sincerely to ask, the question of questions in this life; ‘Lord what wilt thou have me to do?’ I beseech thee to ask it daughter, as thy hourly prayer.”
 
“Did God answer Paul?”
 
“Yea.”
 
“How?”
 
“The blessed apostle tells all! ‘When it pleased God who separated me from my mother’s womb to reveal His son in me, that I might preach among the heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood, ... but I went into Arabia.’ Neither wife, friend, child, nor Ephesian Elders, clinging with tears, could hold him back from duty. Then he preached through this wild country.”
 
“But I’m not Paul, and only a woman.”
 
“‘Only a woman!’ She out of whom went seven devils, a woman, was the herald of the resurrection, and the church; God’s glory in the earth, is likened unto a woman. Oh, when a woman is clothed with the Sun, there is nothing more resplendent, and as for power, naught prevails against her. It seems to me if thou dost emulate her who said to God’s messenger:[357] ‘Be it unto me according to thy word’ thou wilt go ere long to thy father; but thou must now return!”
 
“Return whither? This spot of all earth alone tolerates me!”
 
“No, that’s changed! Thou art the Child of a King. Go home; ay, rise to tell of the One that hath risen in thy heart.”
 
“Dare I? Must I?” Miriamne soon answered, by action, her own questions.
 
The young woman started homeward; at first with fearfulness. Then there came to her great calmness and courage, as she thought: “If I was wrong in going, I’m right in returning. My mother scared me from home into God’s arms. I can tell her that.” The new life had quickened within her the springs of affection. In all her life before she had not been so long apart from her mother. She said to herself, “I’ll just spring into her arms, when I meet her!” And she would have, if permitted.
 
The mother with a face like a stone, emotionless, saw her approach. When the latter stood by the threshold, the parent freezingly said: “Well; what dost thou want here?”
 
A dozen answers pressed for utterance. Some like those shaped by an angry or reckless girl; some such as might come to a politic woman, having recourse ever to cunning against the odds of power. The first thoughts were not of love, the last not of truth. In an instant Miriamne remembered her new personality. She was the missionary! She dared, being right, face any thing, even her mother’s wrath; but in her soul she dared not let bitterness rule. She knew as well that she dared not tell the truth so as to convey a[358] false impression. She might have done so once; but not now. “Lord what wilt thou have me to do?” the golden prayer was on her lips and she had instant grace to say quietly: “I was doing no wrong.”
 
“Was where?”
 
How brave the girl had become. Her reply was calm and courageous. “I was, for a time praying to God; but safe, for God was with me in the Spirit and good Father Adolphus in the flesh.”
 
“The Old Clock Man!”
 
“Yea.”
 
“The wizard! I so suspected. Here is more of this bad work;” and Rizpah angrily thrust before Miriamne a scroll. “That fawning, heretic-priest came here and left this with mock piety saying: ‘I, being the mother, might read it!’ I had no humor to converse with him; but of thee I demand the full meaning. Now, no avoidance, girl; dost thou hear!” Miriamne was not only not abashed, but in her new-found courage took the letter, and without a quaver of the voice, read:
 
“TO THE GRAND MASTER OF THE TEMPLE, LONDON.
 
“Faithful Knight and Son of the Church:
 
“Greeting—I herewith commend to thee and thy most pious and chivalrous offices, my beloved catechumen, Miriamne de Griffin, of Bozrah. She is the truly noble daughter of an English nobleman, now living somewhere in London. He is, I fear, prodigal toward God, and an exile from his family; perhaps in the distress of bodily ailment, most grievous. Prompted by holy desires, this young woman, whom I comm............